Catching up on crime: HER LAST CALL TO LOUIS MACNEICE by Ken Breun

From the back of the book:

She’s hot, well read, and absolutely mad—and she won’t let him go.

Bank robber Cooper picks her up at the supermarket, where he spies her shoplifting and warns her that the store detective is watching her. She puts the stolen food back, and he buys her lunch. It’s the worst mistake he’s ever made. What this pretty young American girl is doing in South London is a mystery to him. Her name is Cassie, and she acts sane until they get home. She’s normal as he takes her clothes off, normal for everything that follows, normal until she tells him that now that he’s touched her, he can never have another woman. He thinks it’s a joke until he wakes up and finds her note, which explains that she drugged him and left with his pistol and some of the money he’s made holding up banks. Only death will keep her away, so death it must be.

My Review:

Bruen’s early voice in HER LAST CALL TO LOUISE MACNEICE reads like Duane Swierczynski by way of Ray Banks, yet the addictive and unique style that forms to create renowned PI Jack Taylor is still prevalent as Bruen so effortlessly engulfs the reader in his world of noir through his lead character Cooper and femme fatale Cassie.

Cassie is crazy and Cooper a criminal. One night of lust turns Cooper’s already troubled life upside down. Fatal attraction to say the least. There’s also the matter of a robbery gone horribly wrong which results in the murder of a bank teller and the subsequent hunt for Copper by the law and lawless alike. Being wanted is a distant second to living in isolation for Cooper. 

HER LAST CALL TO LOUISE MACNEICE gives the reader everything you’d want from a pulp-noir story. It’s train wreck following train wreck following train wreck as Cooper wades through the proverbial in an attempt to rid the stench of failure as much as find higher ground to ward off all those pitchforks.

I had a lot of fun reading this.